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AWS Cost Optimization Tool Selection Guide

Use this guide to select the most appropriate tools based on user queries for both business and developer workflows.

🎯 Service Coverage Overview

This power includes 20 comprehensive service-specific optimization guides covering:

• **5 Compute Services:** EC2, Lambda, Containers, AMD, Graviton
• **4 AI/ML Services:** Bedrock, Bedrock Agents, SageMaker, AI Workloads ← **NEW**
• **4 Database Services:** RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, Redshift, OpenSearch
• **2 Storage Services:** Storage, FSx NetApp ONTAP
• **2 Security Services:** Security, CloudTrail
• **2 Management Services:** Monitoring, Reserved Instances
• **1 Networking Service:** VPC, Load Balancers
• **1 Analytics Service:** ElastiCache Redis
• **1 Application Service:** SQS

For service-specific queries, refer to the detailed guides in the Service-Specific Optimization Queries section below.

Query Pattern → Tool Mapping

Business & FinOps Workflows

Cost Analysis Queries

• "show costs", "cost breakdown", "spending analysis" → `cost_explorer`
• "forecast", "predict costs", "future spending" → `cost_explorer` (getCostForecast)
• "compare costs", "month over month" → `cost_comparison`

Optimization Queries

• "save money", "reduce costs", "optimization" → `cost_optimization`
• "rightsizing", "instance recommendations" → `compute_optimizer`
• "unused resources", "idle instances" → `cost_optimization`

Budget & Monitoring

• "budget", "spending limits", "alerts" → `budgets`
• "anomaly", "unusual spending", "spikes" → `cost_anomaly`
• "free tier", "free usage" → `free_tier_usage`
• "metrics", "CloudWatch metrics", "performance monitoring" → CloudWatch MCP tools (see service guides)
• "alarms", "monitoring alerts", "thresholds" → CloudWatch MCP tools (see service guides)
• "dashboards", "cost dashboards", "monitoring dashboards" → CloudWatch MCP tools (see service guides)

Reserved Capacity

• "reserved instances", "RI utilization" → `ri_performance`
• "savings plans", "SP coverage" → `sp_performance`

Developer & Engineering Workflows

Pre-Deployment Cost Analysis

• "CDK costs", "estimate CDK stack" → `analyze_cdk_project` + `get_pricing`
• "Terraform costs", "estimate Terraform" → `analyze_terraform_project` + `get_pricing`
• "architecture costs", "design costs" → `get_pricing` + `generate_cost_report`
• "before deployment", "pre-deploy analysis" → `analyze_cdk_project` or `analyze_terraform_project`

Service & Architecture Comparison

• "Lambda vs ECS", "service comparison" → `get_pricing` (multi-service)
• "cheapest option", "lowest cost" → `get_pricing` (with cost optimization filters)
• "regional pricing", "region comparison" → `get_pricing` (multi-region)
• "serverless costs", "container costs" → `get_pricing` (service-specific)
• "AI model comparison", "Bedrock vs SageMaker" → See [AI Workloads Cost Optimization](./services/ai-workloads-cost-optimization.md)
• "training vs inference costs", "ML cost modeling" → See [SageMaker Cost Optimization](./services/sagemaker-cost-optimization.md)

Development Environment Optimization

• "dev environment costs", "development spending" → `cost_explorer` (filtered by Environment=dev tags)
• "test environment", "staging costs" → `cost_explorer` (filtered by environment tags)
• "free tier usage", "avoid charges" → `free_tier_usage`
• "development budget", "team spending" → `budgets` + `cost_explorer`

Cost-Aware Development

• "pricing intelligence", "service pricing" → `get_pricing`
• "cost modeling", "estimate costs" → `get_pricing` + `generate_cost_report`
• "architecture decision", "cost comparison" → `get_pricing` (comparative analysis)
• "development ROI", "cost per feature" → `cost_explorer` (custom analysis)
• "AI development costs", "ML project budgeting" → See [AI Workloads Cost Optimization](./services/ai-workloads-cost-optimization.md)
• "agent development costs", "Bedrock agent budgeting" → See [Bedrock Agents Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-agents-cost-optimization.md)

Infrastructure Cost Analysis

• "Bedrock patterns", "AI costs" → `get_bedrock_patterns` + `get_pricing`
• "Bedrock agents", "agent costs", "agent optimization" → See [Bedrock Agents Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-agents-cost-optimization.md)
• "AI workloads", "ML costs", "AI optimization" → See [AI Workloads Cost Optimization](./services/ai-workloads-cost-optimization.md)
• "SageMaker costs", "ML training", "inference costs" → See [SageMaker Cost Optimization](./services/sagemaker-cost-optimization.md)
• "storage optimization", "S3 costs" → `storage_lens` + `get_pricing`
• "database costs", "RDS vs DynamoDB" → `get_pricing` (service comparison)
• "compute costs", "EC2 vs Lambda" → `get_pricing` + `compute_optimizer`

Service-Specific Optimization Queries

AI/ML Services

• "Bedrock costs", "foundation models", "token optimization" → See [Bedrock Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-cost-optimization.md)
• "Bedrock agents", "agent workflows", "prompt caching" → See [Bedrock Agents Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-agents-cost-optimization.md)
• "SageMaker optimization", "ML training costs", "inference optimization" → See [SageMaker Cost Optimization](./services/sagemaker-cost-optimization.md)
• "AI workload optimization", "GPU costs", "ML infrastructure" → See [AI Workloads Cost Optimization](./services/ai-workloads-cost-optimization.md)

Compute Services

• "EC2 optimization", "instance rightsizing", "compute costs" → See [Compute Cost Optimization](./services/compute-cost-optimization.md)
• "Lambda optimization", "serverless costs" → See [Lambda Cost Optimization](./services/lambda-cost-optimization.md)
• "container costs", "ECS/EKS optimization" → See [Containers Cost Optimization](./services/containers-cost-optimization.md)
• "Graviton optimization", "ARM processors" → See [Graviton Cost Optimization](./services/graviton-cost-optimization.md)

Database Services

• "RDS optimization", "Aurora costs" → See [RDS/Aurora Cost Optimization](./services/rds-aurora-cost-optimization.md)
• "DynamoDB optimization", "NoSQL costs" → See [DynamoDB Cost Optimization](./services/dynamodb-cost-optimization.md)
• "Redshift optimization", "data warehouse costs" → See [Redshift Cost Optimization](./services/redshift-cost-optimization.md)
• "OpenSearch optimization", "search costs" → See [OpenSearch Cost Optimization](./services/opensearch-cost-optimization.md)

Storage Services

• "storage optimization", "S3 costs", "EBS optimization" → See [Storage Cost Optimization](./services/storage-cost-optimization.md)
• "FSx optimization", "NetApp ONTAP costs" → See [FSx NetApp ONTAP Cost Optimization](./services/fsx-netapp-ontap-cost-optimization.md)

Networking Services

• "networking costs", "VPC optimization", "load balancer costs" → See [Networking Cost Optimization](./services/networking-cost-optimization.md)

Security Services

• "security costs", "KMS optimization", "GuardDuty costs" → See [Security Cost Optimization](./services/security-cost-optimization.md)
• "CloudTrail optimization", "logging costs" → See [CloudTrail Cost Optimization](./services/cloudtrail-cost-optimization.md)

Management Services

• "monitoring costs", "CloudWatch optimization" → See [Monitoring Cost Optimization](./services/monitoring-cost-optimization.md)
• "Reserved Instances", "RI optimization", "Savings Plans" → See [Reserved Instances Cost Optimization](./services/reserved-instances-cost-optimization.md)

Application Services

• "SQS optimization", "message queue costs" → See [SQS Cost Optimization](./services/sqs-cost-optimization.md)
• "ElastiCache optimization", "Redis costs" → See [ElastiCache Redis Cost Optimization](./services/elasticache-redis-cost-optimization.md)

Cross-Functional Workflows

Pricing Intelligence

• "pricing", "cost comparison", "cheapest" → `get_pricing`
• "service codes", "available services" → `get_pricing_service_codes`
• "pricing attributes", "filter options" → `get_pricing_service_attributes`
• "valid values", "pricing options" → `get_pricing_attribute_values`

Comprehensive Analysis

• "detailed cost report", "full analysis" → `generate_cost_report`
• "cost recommendations", "optimization report" → `rec_details`
• "historical pricing", "bulk data" → `get_price_list_urls`

Advanced Tools (Manual Approval)

• S3 storage analysis → `storage_lens`
• Custom SQL analysis → `session_sql`
• Pricing calculator → `bcm_pricing_calc`

CloudWatch MCP Tools (Auto-Approved)

• Metrics analysis → `list_metrics`, `get_metric_statistics`, `get_metric_data`
• Alarm management → `describe_alarms`
• Dashboard management → `list_dashboards`, `get_dashboard`
• Log analysis → `describe_log_groups`, `get_log_events`, `start_query`
• Metric filters → `describe_metric_filters`

Note: CloudWatch tools are integrated throughout service-specific guides for cost-performance correlation analysis.

Workflow Combinations

Complete Pre-Deployment Analysis

1. analyze_cdk_project or analyze_terraform_project → Identify services

2. get_pricing → Get pricing for identified services

3. generate_cost_report → Generate comprehensive cost analysis

Architecture Decision Support

1. get_pricing → Compare service options

2. get_pricing_service_attributes → Understand pricing dimensions

3. get_pricing_attribute_values → Explore configuration options

Development Cost Optimization

1. cost_explorer → Analyze current development spending

2. free_tier_usage → Check Free Tier utilization

3. cost_optimization → Find optimization opportunities

4. budgets → Monitor spending limits

AI/ML Cost Optimization Workflow

1. cost_explorer → Analyze current AI/ML spending by service

2. get_pricing → Compare model and instance pricing options

3. Refer to service-specific guides:

• [AI Workloads Cost Optimization](./services/ai-workloads-cost-optimization.md) for comprehensive AI strategy
• [Bedrock Agents Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-agents-cost-optimization.md) for agent-specific optimization
• [SageMaker Cost Optimization](./services/sagemaker-cost-optimization.md) for ML training and inference
• [Bedrock Cost Optimization](./services/bedrock-cost-optimization.md) for foundation model optimization

Service-Specific Optimization Workflow

1. cost_explorer → Identify high-cost services

2. Refer to appropriate service guide from the 20 available guides in /services/

3. get_pricing → Compare optimization options

4. CloudWatch MCP tools → Monitor performance metrics for cost correlation

5. cost_optimization → Implement recommendations

6. budgets → Monitor optimization results

Performance-Cost Correlation Analysis

1. cost_explorer → Analyze service costs

2. CloudWatch MCP tools → Get performance metrics (get_metric_statistics, get_metric_data)

3. Service-specific guides → Apply optimization strategies

4. CloudWatch MCP tools → Set up monitoring (describe_alarms, get_dashboard)

5. budgets → Track cost impact of optimizations